Bhoot, now playing in the neighbourhood

And if the old staring-eyeball routine doesn’t work, Ram Gopal Varma has a cunning back up plan. He hires unemployed teenagers and places them at strategic corners in the auditorium to scream their guts out into your ears at strategic moments in the film — or at least he appears to. Consequently, everyone in the audience ends up shrieking hysterically at the shrieking that’s going on and gets to go home with perforated eardrums, which, of course, is the sign of a truly great scary film.

Come to think of it, though, why pay good money to get scared in an auditorium, when we have absolute hair-raising, gut-wrenching fare playing in neighbourhoods near us and which we can all witness at no extra cost. There is, for instance, that all-time grosser, The Dead Mosque and the Undead Temple, which has been running for over 10 years now, produced by the RSS, directed by the VHP-Bajrang Dal, starring the Shiv Sena. And if that doesn’t throw you, there is that great mystery thriller, The Best Bakery in Town, produced and directed by Narendra Modi, with the catchline: In this bakery, you can be sure it is not biscuits that are baked. A bit gruesome, I’d grant, but it was as you know a golden jubilee hit and helped to win for Modi another term as chief minister of Gujarat.

But my current favourite is the smash-hit, The Haunted Train, produced by the Indian Railways and directed by the great minister, Nitish Kumar. It now has the entire citizenry of the nation chewing their toenails in terror.

Its plot, as in all great classics, is simple and straightforward. People climb on board an ordinary-looking train — ordinary people with their little stocks of food, curd-rice or parathas, as the case may be, their suitcases — sometimes secured with the aid of a rope — their plastic bags of bananas and their water bottles. All very normal.

Things continue to appear pleasantly ordinary for a stretch of time — remember, every great suspense film thrives on an ambience of the everyday. The protagonists play cards or chatter — with the complete lack of inhibition that marks conversations between strangers — about the price of mangoes, family affairs, personal debts, cheap holidays, how the railways are not what they used to be and how politicians are taking the country down the tube. Pedestrian conversations, punctured occasionally by interruptions from the tea/coffee vendor and the TT in black coat and white pants cut in a style that went out of style with Raj Kapoor. All is as it should be.

But, somewhere, a little shiver of fear feeds itself on the stray sounds emanating from this Nitish Kumar classic. A baby’s wail, for instance, or the handle of the ‘‘Stop Train’’ device suddenly falling out of its holder. The mnemonic clatter-clank of the train on its track takes on an eerie acoustic texture. A loose plastic bag flies in the air as a monsoon morning acquires a strange silvery glow. The little shiver of fear now turns into a great big tremble, as the something-will-go-wrong feeling picks you up by the collar and flings you across the room.

At that precise moment, you look up and the train is flowing like a river from the bridge to the morning traffic down below. Babies and bundles spill out into space, as the audience gasps for breath. Then, very slowly, the camera pans to one solitary face in a warped window frame, pinned by a fallen berth and the railings. It expresses unbearable pain, unspeakable horror.

The screen slowly goes dark as this Nitish Kumar masterpiece comes to an end. Don’t miss his next classic.